Surprises are always nice. When you order a 3A product it’s generally a six to eight month wait before the item ships. The good news is that the item is generally paid in advance and is quite surprising when it shows up at your door! This is exactly what happened with my Team Fortress 2 Robot Heavy from Mann vs. Machine.

I think the preorder was late last year and slated to be released second quarter of 2014. Well, I just kind of forgot about him. Then I totally missed when 3A sent out their shipping update that he was included, so a couple of days ago I had a slip on my door from the US Postal Service. Typically this means something from out of the country has arrived, but I wasn’t expecting any Transformers. I looked up the tracking code before heading to the post office and didn’t recognize the freight service being out of Singapore as my past shipments from 3A came from Hong Kong. So as you can expect I was thrilled when I saw the typical 3A box with “Robot Heavy 1/6” printed on the side!

So yes, the Robot Heavy from TF2 is here. It’s fabulous and I will more than likely spend the next 500 or so words gushing over him.

There are two versions of the Mann vs Machine Heavy: Red and Blu. As much as I wanted both it would have been a painfully expensive venture to obtain the entire TF2 cast in both colors, so I stuck with the traditional BLU version. Do I regret it? Possibly. The red looks really sharp. But now having him in hand, I have no clue where in the hell I would keep a second set of these guys. They are gigantic!

The Robot Heavy comes packed in a very collector friendly box with a nice Team Fortress 2 and Mann vs. Machine motif. The Heavy is packed with his gigantic mini-gun and if you ordered it from Bambaland you get yourself a pair of boxing gloves specifically colored to the variant you bought. He also includes a code to unlock a “Genuine Little Bear.” Check out the picture below, but he is a pocket buddy for your Heavy in-game.

I think the biggest surprise to me was how cool the boxing gloves turned out. The detail is amazing on them, and the figure has great articulation range so you can get him into some awesome boxing poses. The one thing to look out for with the gloves is that the hole that connects them to the wrist peg is tiny. The gloves are made of softer material than the hands, but it still takes a noble effort to get them on. I found if I held the wrist with one hand and eased the gloves on by twisting them back and forth that worked best. They also seem to slip on easier after the first time.

The articulation on the Heavy is really well done. Whereas the articulation on the Atlas and P-Body release was good, it was also very complicated and scary. The Heavy feels like a much more sturdy figure, and I had a lot more confidence in testing his joints than I did with the Portal bots. Most of his poses (including holding his giant gun) are based around his large arms. The shoulders have an ENORMOUS range of motion with double ball joints with a shoulder ball as well. The elbows can hit a 90 degree angle and then the hands have individually articulated figures. The leg scheme is a little more basic but does its job of helping him keep his center of balance.

I’m not sure if it’s just the pictures that 3A took, but I think the blue parts of his body are a little more subdued than the prototype’s. Other than a slight color shade change it appears that everything else made it to the production figure. The weathering looks fantastic and all the paint is sharp. He looks like he was pulled right from the game.

These TF2 Heavy figures have just started arriving. If you preorderred direct from 3A it may be waiting at your door right now! Did you miss out and want one? Amazon currently has one in stock and I’m sure your favorite retailers will also in the coming month. The only thing you are missing out on by buying now is the boxing gloves. Expect to pay between $220 and $250 if you want one, which is high but fairly typical these days for high-end licensed 1/6 scale action figures.

* – I didn’t have the three AG1 batteries needed to do his LED eyes, I put in an order for some from Amazon so I’ll update when I get them!

I still haven’t played Fortress 2, and I have never owned anything from 3A due to the price, but if they release a smaller version of this figure I may have to pick one up.
The problem I’ve found was even when I wanted to buy something, or thought I did, I had a really hard time figuring out where and when the items would be on sale.

I agree about their sale schedule, a lot of it is having to plan around their 9 AM Hong Kong time drops, that and having to pay up front with a small amount of time to put together the money.

Usually their licensed stuff is easier to get since they likely have to sell more, so the BBTS, Amazon’s, etc of the world get them in as well. Typically you just miss out on the little exclusive items like the boxing gloves.

A 6″ version would be cool, but I wonder if that creeps into NECA’s license territory?

mine finally arrived. I was really surprised at how lite this big figure was. it feels cheap and its hard to not think of it as cheap. I thought the finish was going to be more metallic. oh well. finally came in!

Ya know, I thought the same thing at first because it does feel surprisingly light. But then I considered the thing obviously isn’t going to be made of metal, and it needs space for the articulation. In the end it looks great and has a pretty great range of motion for a large scale figure … so the lightness didn’t bug me that much.

I actually think I forgot to mention it in the review about the weight. I intended to, oops.